


Keep the darkness at bay (even for just one more night)

by TantalumCobalt



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Brothers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fear, Gen, Insomnia, fear toxin, protecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 16:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10835196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TantalumCobalt/pseuds/TantalumCobalt
Summary: Some demons are easy to see, easy to fight off with a katana and well-executed kick to the head. Others... not so much.





	Keep the darkness at bay (even for just one more night)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a prompt on Tumblr but it got a bit long to be a drabble so I'm posting it separately.
> 
> Prompt was: If you're still doing the Tim Drake prompts, what about a fic where Tim protects Damian or vice/versa? You write their dynamic so well!

The sound is so quiet he would have missed it if he wasn't a bat. Brushed it off as just another groan from a creaking old house. A random, insignificant noise magnified by the silence and darkness of the night. Muffled beneath the low whistle of the kettle boiling. But then he hears it again, a little louder, a little more unmistakably human. Childlike.

_Frightened_.

Tim is on his knees in an instant, pushing aside the loose wall panelling and peering into the crawlspace that stretches from behind the kitchen pantry to the laundry room off the basement. He's not sure what it was used for back when Wayne Manor was operating as a fully-staffed mansion, but it's flat for about two metres before it slopes down, another flat part halfway down and one before the opening at the bottom. It's pitch black and even when he stretches his arm in he can't feel anything. He thinks maybe he imagined it - it wouldn't be the first time his insomnia got so bad he's had auditory hallucinations - but there's a tight coil of worry squeezing his chest and he can't just forget about it. Even if there's no one in there, even if he's going crazy, he needs to _know_.

Thoughts of making tea forgotten, he crawls into the narrow space. It's only just big enough for him to fit on his hands and knees, much too small for Dick or Jason or anyone else in the family. Except maybe Cass because she has some freaky contortionist skills and none of the bulky muscle that everyone else seems to grow into. And Damian. 

Damian who should be in bed right now, sleeping off the lingering effects of the fear toxin he was dosed with the night before.

Fumbling for his phone and turning up the screen brightness, he inches slowly forward and shines it ahead, the feeling in his gut telling him he knows what he's going to see even before he gets a glimpse of the dark figure curled into a ball. Biting his lip, Tim contemplates backing out, going to wake Bruce or Alfred, maybe Dick if he didn't go home after patrol, letting someone the brat actually likes to be around deal with this.

But none of them could fit in the crawlspace.

And Tim is already here.

The walls are made of rough wood so he's able to move forward slowly by bracing his hands against the sides of the tunnel and crawling down the gentle slope on his knees. It's painful and by the time the floor levels out again he has several splinters and his knees are aching. At least the ceiling is a little higher here, so he can sit back on his heels and pull his phone out again to light up the area with its torch, temporarily blinding himself with the sudden light. His voice is barely a whisper as he calls, "Damian?"

Damian flinches back, whimpers, hands coming up to protect him from attack. From _Tim_. God, as if he would actually hurt him without being provoked.

"Woah, easy." Tim holds his own hands up in front of his chest, open-palmed so Damian can see he doesn't mean any harm. Or could, if he would actually look at him. He's still curled up, swimming in a too-large hoodie that probably belongs to Dick, cringing away behind his arm. He's trembling finely, breathing coming in shaky little gasps, and Tim has a sudden urge to reach forward and tug him into his lap, hold him close and protect him from whatever monsters he thinks are chasing him in the dark. It's probably some big brother instinct that he blames on Dick's influence.

"Damian," he tries again, voice projecting a calm and soothing aura. "You're okay. It's just me, just Tim." he cringes as he says it, not sure him being here is actually a comfort. It's been several years and their relationship is a bit better, more civilised, but they still don't really get along the way Dick wants them to.

It seems to work though because Damian's arm wavers then drops completely as he uncurls a little, blinking at Tim with wide, tear-filled eyes. "Tim?" he repeats, voice hoarse. His gaze flickers around the cramped crawlspace before locking onto Tim's face.

Cautiously, feeling like he's dealing with a skittish animal instead of his fierce younger brother, Tim reaches forward, not quite enough to touch, hand hanging in the small gap between them. "Yeah, it's me." He wriggles his fingers a little. "I'm real, I promise, you can check."

Damian's fingers are like ice when they wrap around his wrist and he can't help but hiss a small breath in through his teeth. _Jesus, kid_ , he thinks, _how long have you been down here?_  

"I thought I was..." Damian trails off and Tim doesn't push him to finish the sentence. He's not entirely sure he _wants_  to know what fear-gas-induced nightmares were going through his head. He's not Dick, he's not going to make the touchy-feely offer of talking about it.

Damian is still holding his wrist, fingers light against his pulse point, and Tim turns his hand so he can do the same, turning it into a half-hearted monkey grip. His brother's pulse is racing. "I was going to make tea. Do you want some?" he offers, mind whirling with ways to handle the situation and get Damian back upstairs without him freaking out even more.

A shaky inhale, a hesitant nod, and then it's just a matter of manoeuvring them out of the crawlspace. It probably would have been easier to go down than up, but the stairs out of the basement and the path back to the kitchen would have taken them past Alfred's rooms and Tim doesn't want to risk waking him up. He has a feeling adding a third party to the night's adventure, even if it were Alfred, would just make Damian even more frightened and jumpy.

There's enough moonlight streaming in through the window to see by, but Tim flicks on the light anyway. Just to make sure there are no shadows for monsters to hide in. He doesn't miss the way Damian's shoulders drop a little, a fraction of the tension seeping out of him.

"Jasmine okay?" Tim asks, mostly just to fill the silence. He gets a short nod in return and drops teabags into two mugs, flicking the kettle on for the second time that night.

He's aware of Damian hovering just behind him while he makes the tea but pretends not to. At this point he doesn't even care if the kid is waiting to attack him or awkwardly seeking some kind of comfort. They sit down at the breakfast bar and there are five stools to choose from but Damian hops onto the one right beside Tim. It should be creepy, but instead it just makes his chest tighten with the same worry that had gripped him when he first heard the muffled whimper that sent him into the crawlspace.

"You know nothing's going to hurt you, right?" He feels a bit like an idiot, stumbling over the reassurance, but there's nobody else around to say it and he needs to check that Damian knows. "I mean. B and Dick... they'd never let anything happen to you. Alfred, too, he'd fight off anyone who tried to harm you."

Damian seems to shrink even further into his overlarge hoodie, eyes never leaving the mug he cradles between his hands as he shrugs. Tim sighs, realising words aren't going to be enough. He's going to need to try Dick's method of problem solving.

"Okay, c'mere," he says, grabbing a fistful of the kid's hoodie and tugging him closer until Damian is slumped against his chest, Tim's arms circling around him in a one-sided hug. "I'd never let anyone hurt you either," he admits quietly. "Not one of the rogues, or some petty thug, or any of the freaky demons your mind is conjuring up. Not as long as I can do something to chase them away. Got it?"

"Got it," Damian repeats. The response sounds more like a reflex than anything else but whatever, beating the shit out of people with a bow staff is something Tim is perfectly comfortable with, assuring someone that he would be the shit out of people with a bow staff for them, not so much.

"Good." Tim loosens his hold, pushes the kid back up to sit on his own. "Now. What movie do you want to watch?"

Damian blinks at him, looking a little dazed. "Movie?"

"Well I assume you're not going back to sleep, and I was probably never going to be sleeping anyway, but it is still the middle of the night so we can't exactly go out play catch or whatever it is normal brothers do. So what movie do you want to watch?"

"Um." Damian takes a sip of his tea, strangely hesitant as he says, "Richard introduced me to a TV show about these cops..."

Knowing Dick, that could only be Brooklyn 99. Funny, light-hearted, unlikely to trigger any more panic attacks. Tim smiles. "Sounds good."

They settle in on the couch in the den with Netflix playing episode after episode. Damian sits a little closer than he normally would and Tim doesn't complain about the lights staying on like he would any other time. He knows what it's like to be scared, to hate yourself for jumping at every unexpected noise, every flickering shadow, to not want to ask for help even as you wish someone would come along and save you from your own mind.

He may not be the best brother but he's a damn good vigilante. And in bold, capitalised print at the top of the vigilante code is rule number one: be a protector first, a hero second. It doesn't matter whether the monsters are corporeal or incorporeal, whether he has to beat them away with a bow staff or a blanket, whether they're chasing an innocent bystander or his brother. Protecting people is Tim's job.

And he's damn good at his job.


End file.
